The Hamas terrorist group says its military chief, Mohammed Deif, is still alive after Israel targeted Hamas leaders with airstrikes over the weekend, although the group has provided no proof of that claim.
Israel’s military said that one of Mr. Deif’s top deputies, Rafa'a Salameh, commander of Hamas’s Khan Yunis Brigade, was killed in the attack on July 13. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the raid that “there still isn’t absolute certainty” that Mr. Deif is dead.
Mr. Netanyahu said all of Hamas’s leaders have been “marked for death” and that killing them would move Hamas closer to accepting a cease-fire deal.
“The IDF’s Southern Command and the [Israeli Air Force] carried out a strike in an area where two senior Hamas terrorists and additional terrorists hid among civilians,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated on July 13. “The location of the strike was an open area surrounded by trees, several buildings, and sheds.”
Witnesses said the attack occurred in an area that Israel had designated as safe for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. Israel’s military wouldn’t confirm that.
Palestinian health officials said the airstrike, at a designated humanitarian zone of Al Mawasi near Khan Yunis, killed at least 90 Palestinians and wounded as many as 300. Palestinian health authorities, which are controlled by Hamas, don’t distinguish between civilian and military casualties.
Mr. Deif, who has topped Israel’s most-wanted list, has been in hiding for years.
The IDF said in a social media post that Mr. Salameh “was one of the masterminds” of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that killed 1,200 people.
Mr. Salameh, as commander previously of Hamas’s Khan Yunis-Al Qarara Battalion, “played a significant role in the abduction of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit,” who was held hostage for five years until his release in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians.
Strike Near Lebanon-Syria Border
In another targeted strike, a drone on July 15 destroyed a car near the Lebanon–Syria border, killing a prominent Syrian businessman sanctioned by the United States and with close ties to Syrian President Bashar Assad.The businessman, Mohammed Baraa Katerji, 48, was killed near Saboura, a few kilometers inside Syria, while driving in his SUV on the highway linking Syria with Lebanon. A UK-based Syrian opposition group said Mr. Katerji was apparently targeted because he used to fund the “Syrian resistance” against Israel in the Golan Heights, territory that Israel conquered from Syria in 1967’s Six Day War.
Mr. Katerji was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in 2018 as President Bashar al-Assad’s middleman trading oil with the ISIS terrorist group and for facilitating weapons shipments to Syria from Iraq.
The Katerji Co., a trucking company, shipped weapons, sometimes under the guise of importing food, to Syria from Iraq.
A drone strike along the same highway on July 9 killed a Hezbollah commander and a one-time bodyguard of the terrorist group’s leader. Israel hasn’t formally taken responsibility for that attack or the one on Mr. Katerji.
The United Nations said on July 15 that it would bring in more armored vehicles and personal protection equipment for its humanitarian aid operations after receiving approval from Israeli authorities.
The U.N. has long blamed Israel for slow aid deliveries to Gaza but acknowledged recently it was facing “total lawlessness” there. Armed gangs wait for trucks to loot them, and Hamas seizes much of the food aid.
“The truck drivers that we use have been regularly threatened or assaulted. They’ve become less and less willing, understandably, to move assistance from the border crossings to our warehouses and then on to the people that are in need,” said Scott Anderson, deputy humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Mr. Anderson said that fewer than 100 U.N. aid trucks get through daily. Commercial deliveries do better, but he said they “pay essentially protection money to the families in the south and they also have armed guards.”
The European Union on July 15 announced sanctions against five Israelis and three Israeli groups it described as responsible for “serious and systematic human rights abuses” against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The list included Tzav 9, a group that the EU said had regularly blocked humanitarian aid trucks delivering food, water, and fuel to the Gaza Strip.
Also on the list were Ben-Zion Gopstein, founder and leader of the Lehava group, and Isaschar Manne, described as the founder of an unauthorized outpost in the West Bank, which many Israelis call Judea and Samaria.
The United States has also sanctioned the group and the two men. The sanctions include an asset freeze and a ban on travel to EU countries.
